Simplog Tutorial and Installation How To

This tutorial describes how to use the Simplog weblog software with your NEXCESS.NET web hosting account. NEXCESS.NET specializes in hosting Simplog blogs and this tutorial is meant to help you quickly setup your site with our web hosting service.

Simplog is open source, meaning that you can use and distribute it as you'd like as long as you don't change it.

For the sake of this tutorial we'll assume that you own the domain 'johnsmith.com' and are setting up Simplog at http://johnsmith.com/simplog/.

Follow these steps to complete the tutorial:

1. Although this tutorial assumes you're using a shared/reseller hosting account, the same basic process should work for our EliteRAX dedicated hosting clients.
   The first thing to do is to run through the SiteWorx MySQL tutorial and create a database for Simplog to use to store the information it needs.

   Create a database called 'simplog' with a user named 'simplog'. When you do this SiteWorx will prefix the database and user names with some text resembling your domain name.

   With our example domain of 'johnsmith.com' the database name is 'johnsmit_simplog' and the username is the same 'johnsmit_simplog'.
2. Download the latest version of Simplog from the Simplog website and unzip the contents of the zip file to your desktop using http://winzip.com. You should now have a folder which contains all the files and folders you need to install and run Simplog.
3. Upload the 'simplog' folder to your web hosting account. You should do this using an FTP Program. If you need help with FTPing files, you can check out the FTP tutorials on our tutorials page.
4. Now we can access the Simplog installer. In this example, we'll point to 'http://www.johnsmith.com/simplog/install.php'. You should now be on the page that displays the license information. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Accept' button to continue. You should now be on the database information page. Enter the information for the database you created in step #1. In this example, we'll enter the information as follows:

   • DB Host 'localhost' - Stays the same.
   • DB User 'johnsmit_simplog'
   • DB Password 'mypassword'
   • DB Name 'johnsmit_simplog'
   • DB Type 'MySQL' - Stays the same.

   Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Submit' button to save these values. This next page shows you what values you entered for your database. Look over them to make sure you enetered the correct values. If you made a mistake, go back and fix it. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Since this is the first time we've installed this, we'll click on the 'New Install' button to continue. Now you should be on the page where you create the admin account. Enter the information as you'd like for your admin account. You will use this account to manage your blog. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Install!' button to continue. Your Simplog database installation is now complete. The page you're on now tells you that you need to rename 'config-dist.php' to 'config.php' and edit the values in this file before continuing. Your screen should look like this:

   

5. Now we're going to open the 'config-dist.php' file that's located in the 'simplog' folder on our desktop, NOT the one on the webspace. Open this file using your text editing program. In this example, we're going to change the values as follows:
   • $blogurl = "http://johnsmith.com/simplog/index.php"; //change this
   • $baseurl = "http://johnsmith.com/simplog"; //change this - omit the trailing slash
   • $basepath = "/home/johnsmith.com/html/simplog"; //change this
   • $host = "localhost";
   • $dbase = "johnsmit_simplog";
   • $user = "johnsmit_simplog";
   • $passwd = "mypassword";

   All of the other values can be left as the default values or you can change them according to your preferences. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Save the 'config-dist.php' file as 'config.php' and use your FTP program to upload this file to the server.

6. You should now click on the 'Start using Simplog' link that should still be in your browser. If it isn't, in this example we would point to 'http://www.johnsmith.com/simplog/login.php' to access the login page. Enter the information for the admin account you created. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Sign In' button to login to your Simplog control panel. You can use this control panel to add and modify blog posts as well as change the settings of your blog. The Simplog tutorial is now complete. Your screen should look like this:

   

   For more information on how to use Simplog once it's installed, check out the Simplog Forums.